A computer mouse is an input device which the user can move over a 2D plane that the cursor on the screen will move, correspondingly. And there are two or three buttons on the mouse which allow the user to click and select. The disadvantage of the conventional mouse is that a pad area is needed for mouse to work on. Also, the user has to move his/her hand back and forth between the keyboard and the mouse frequently for word processing.
Examples of apparatuses are known to relieve above drawbacks. A hand positioned mouse is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,199 wherein a physical tracking ball is mounted on a glove for position control of the cursor. The tracking ball is operated as the one mounted on a notebook computer except that it is mounted on the side of the index finger of the glove and operated by the thumb. The limitation is that the tracking ball have to be small to be mounted on a finger and the position control of a cursor appears to be unstable and lacks dexterity. Another apparatus is disclosed by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,444,462 and 6,097,369 wherein a glove-like body is to be worn on the hand of the computer operator. Each direction of the cursor motion is controlled by sensing the direction of movement of a user's body element, for example, the index finger and transmits corresponding signals to move the cursor in the corresponding direction, motion in each direction can be switch ON or OFF with respect to either of the two opposite senses. Thus, two elements of the user's body control UP/DOWN and LEFT/RIGHT of the X-Y directions of the cursor. It is noted that a threshold position has to be defined for the two opposing directions to be switched ON or OFF, it is not easy to operate with that threshold in mind and the motion range of the body element for each direction is very limited.
The objective of this invention is to provide an alternative mouse glove which mimic the operation of a tracking ball. A new concept of a virtual tracking ball is introduced to design such a device. Because the tracking ball is virtual that it can be large enough to fit just for operation of any user, and it is weightless. The actions operated with the mouse glove can be performed ergonomically and be mapped to the operation of a real mouse naturally. Only one linear motion is controlled by the user, and of which the movements of the two senses, respectively, are operated by the thumb and a corresponding finger. Therefore, the user does not have to worry about the finger's position to be in positive or in negative sense. The other dimension for control is the orientation of the movement, which is controlled by sensing the rolling of the hand. With such a design, it is expected that the glove mouse is able to be operated ergonomically with great efficiency.